New email change procedure

In order to further improve domain name security, ICANN has recently implemented new rules and procedures governing domain name ownership. These rules in particular are in regards to changes made to domain name contact information, most notably the email address.

This new procedure, which takes effect on December 1, 2016, will involve sending a confirmation link to both the current and future email addresses (as is currently done for domain name transfers and ownership changes). The change can only be completed once both links have been accepted. Then, once it has been completed, a confirmation email is sent to both email addresses as notification of the change.

This new process also includes a transfer lock on domain names associated with any “owner” contacts (or “administrative” contacts in certain cases) after undergoing an email change. This lock will prevent the domain name from being transferred for a period of 60 days following the email update.

ICANN now provides the option for a “Designated Agent” to waive this 60-day lock, and as we are aware that this new obligation makes the transfer process more complicated, especially should you ever lose access to the email address currently on your account, we have chosen to allow you to authorize Gandi to act as your Designated Agent and remove the 60-day transfer lock, which we will do by default when selecting this option.

To make Gandi your Designated Agent, you would just need to confirm Gandi’s new contract during your next email address change or domain name operation. The new contract adds this notion of a Designated Agent, thereby allowing us to remove the transfer lock whenever you choose to update your email address.

This new process will require some additional development on our part, though, so we will not be able to implement this feature immediately on December 1. Unfortunately, this means in the meantime, you will be temporarily unable to modify your email address via our website except through our manual validation process. For that, you  just need to request the email change following the manual email change process with our customer care team.

We expect the process to be fully automated sometime in mid-December 2016, at which point it will become available directly from our website. Check back for future upates as we will be posting them here when they come in.

[UPDATE  – January 2017]

We have completed the development of a way to make this process automatic. It is therefore now possible for you to update the email address linked to your handle from the Account Management section of our website once you are logged into it. You can find some more information on this in our related documentation page, notably concerning the acceptance of the new contract that covers the “Designated Agent” notion.

It is also possible to update a handle’s email address via our public API. However, you must first validate our new contract which includes the notion of “Designated Agent”. To do this, you need to initiate a new domain name operation (renewal, registration, transfer) via our website, and validate the new contract during the operation. Once this step has been achieved, you will be able to proceed with email changes on handles as desired, using the contact.update method.